Tuesday, 22 July 2014

The Prime Minister condemned France’s plans to continue with a €1.2 billion (£950 million) sale of warships to Russia. Germany, France and Italy are responsible for 90 per cent of defence exports to Russia, MPs were told. Mr Cameron said: “We have already unilaterally, as have the US, said that we would not sell further arms to Russia. We believe other European countries should be doing the same thing. Frankly in this country it would be unthinkable to fulfil an order like the one outstanding that the French have. But we need to put the pressure on with all our partners to say that we cannot go on doing business as usual with a country when it’s behaving in this way.” The US has also urged the French to suspend the Mistral deal. “The Americans are absolutely furious about the French still training Russian military personnel,” said a diplomatic source.